


Except Death and Taxes

by Hecate



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Crack, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7798294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ah, tax season,” Seraphi Abrasax says, “time for even the strongest to lose hope and start burning things, wailing in despair as the flames grow higher and the forms more redundant.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Except Death and Taxes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jupeboxhero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jupeboxhero/gifts).



“That's it,” Jupiter says, staring at the ever-growing mountains of paperwork on the bedroom floor, “I abdicate.”

Behind her, Caine laughs. “You can deal with spaceships, aliens, bloodthirsty royals, and becoming queen of the earth, but you can't deal with taxes?”

Jupiter turns to glare at him. “These aren't taxes, these are the deep valleys of hell where hope goes to die.”

“Mountains, more like,“ Caine replies as forms start to slip down the paper hill closest to him. He doesn't do anything to stop them.

Bad dog, Jupiter thinks, almost says, but she is saved from herself by the doorbell ringing. Still, she is a queen, and she will have the last word.

“Fuck you,” she tells him, voice lofty and dignified.

Caine laughs again.

She is almost glad that he broke up with her. 

Though, really, it should have been the other way around. It would have been the queenly thing to do.

“Fuck my life,” Jupiter says just seconds later, standing in the open door and staring at her mirror image smiling at her.

“Ah, tax season,” Seraphi Abrasax says, “time for even the strongest to lose hope and start burning things, wailing in despair as the flames grow higher and the forms more redundant.” She sounds almost like Jupiter. It's creepy.

Jupiter shuts the door in her own face.

*****

“Uhm, Jupes,” Caine says hours later.

Jupiter chooses to ignore him in favour of reading through another oh-so-great tutorial on filling out form 4567c in a few hours only, saving Lithuania from Ores' tax authorities. Maybe, she thinks, she should just not pay taxes for weird European nations. She isn't even sure how to pay those taxes, after all. It's not like her cleaning job started to pay better after she became a queen.

“I need help with this,” she mutters, looking at form 2345 - used for all the information required on sentient robots. She absently makes the sign of the cross and throws the form into a corner. She never liked Skynet. It can pay its own damn taxes.

“Help is sitting in the hall in front of your apartment,” Cain says, “with its royal butt on the ground.”

“Not very queenly,” she comments.

“I thought so,” he goes on.

She breathes in. Breathes out. 

“Okay,” she finally decides, “let the bitch in.”

He frowns. “No dog jokes”

*****

“Hello, Jupiter,” Seraphi says.

Jupiter refuses to look at her. It just really is too creepy.

“Aren't you supposed to be dead?” she asks instead, thinking of the villain-y tirade Balem shouted into her face before meeting his well-deserved end.

“Oh,” Seraphi says, “that. A minor incident. It happens. I thought you learned that by now.”

“I didn't die,” Jupiter tries.

Jupiter hears Seraphi chuckle. She hopes she never made that sound in her whole life, it sounds like something dying in a closet at 4 in the morning.

“But you will,” Seraphi says, “and if you do it right, you'll come back, too.”

Jupiter pulls a form out of the heap next to her. 75639b. It's about water in the desert.

“Space vampires,” she tells Caine.

He shrugs.

*****

Jupiter falls asleep at 3 am, her head resting on form 254c.

She dreams of herself. No, she dreams of Seraphi, sees her with her children, sees her regretting the choices she made and searching for another life far away from everlasting youth.

When she wakes up, the papers are gone.

“I hate my life,” Jupiter tells the universe.

The universe doesn't deign to answer.

*****

She finds Seraphi on the roof of the building, a dying fire in front of her.

“You didn't.”

Seraphi smiles. “Forms like that are bad for your skin.”

“I'm gonna murder you,” Jupiter replies. “And I'm gonna make it stick.”

Then she throws herself at Seraphi with a roar.

*****

She's gotta hand it to Seraphi: For a dead queen, she is pretty good at slapping people. And fighting dirty. And looking great while doing so.

“You tore out my hair!”

“You jumped me!”

Jupiter blinks, considers commenting on Seraphi's choice of words. But there are more important things. “You burned the tax forms!”

Seraphi shrugs.

Jupiter almost goes after her again.

Seraphi takes a step back, looking wary. “I did it for your own good.”

Jupiter gets in a good slap herself this time.

*****

“It's not as if you filled them out correctly!” Seraphi screams as Jupiter hurls an old football at her.

“At least I didn't burn them!” she counters, looking for something else to throw.

*****

Finally, it's calm.

“I'm sorry,” Seraphi says into the quietness. “I should have told you about it. But I thought you wouldn't understand.”

“I don't understand.”

“Call the Aegis and I'll show you.”

So Jupiter does.

*****

Seraphi gets drunk on the way to Ores, dancing through Jupiter's room gracelessly. At some point she tells Jupiter that she's pretty.

Jupiter tells herself that she didn't blush at the words. After all, it's hardly a surprise Seraphi thinks that.

“I hope I don't look this dumb when I'm drunk,” Jupiter tells the air, the room's walls and possibly Seraphi.

Not one of them replies.

The universe is uncaring, after all.

*****

They arrive at Ores, and Seraphi doesn't even have the grace to be hungover. Instead, she walks out of the spaceship looking superior and powerful. Figures.

Jupiter follows, her face hidden beneath a veil. She isn't there to be herself, that is Seraphi's job for the day. She is there to – as Seraphi put it before leaving the ship – watch and learn.

And she tries, thinking of the years to come. She tries and fails, too mesmerized by the way Seraphi navigates Ores. She's all sure steps and confidence, blasting past robots and queues without ever stopping.

When they leave the building, Jupiter can hardly remember how Seraphi did it all.

“Did you takes notes?” she asks Caine, hopeful.

He nods.

Good dog, she doesn't say. Instead, she pats his hand.

*****

“Let me show you Ores,” Seraphi says.

Jupiter frowns. “I've been here before.”

“But did you see it?”

Jupiter shakes her head. “Not much of it. But from what I heard, it's hardly worth it.”

Seraphi laughs. “It isn't. If you're not a queen. But we are.”

She offers Jupiter her hand, smiling at her in a way that makes her look young and carefree, makes her look so unlike Jupiter. It eases something inside of her, untangles fears and responsibilities, and weaves something new out of the last few months and all the dreams she ever had of the stars.

She takes Seraphi's hand.

*****

“I almost married Titus,” she tells Seraphi, standing in a ballroom, its walls made of glass, the view astonishing and yet ugly.

When Jupiter turns to look at her, Seraphi seems horrified and amused at the same time.

“He played me,” she tells her.

“The only reason to marry him,” Seraphi comments.

“What about politics?”

“In that case, you should have tried to marry Balem. Though he isn't exactly husband material.”

Jupiter shudders. “I killed that one.”

“And I'm sure he had it coming.”

For a moment, Jupiter isn't sure if what she feels for Seraphi is disgust or love. Then she remembers Balem, the way he screamed at her, his attempts to murder her and her family. 

Love, she finally decides, it's definitely love. 

“Dance with me,” Jupiter says.

Seraphi laughs. And does.

*****

The stars and infatuation, Jupiter knows, have always turned her into an idiot.

She almost donated her eggs just to get a telescope, she told Caine she liked dogs simply because she liked him, his pretty eyes and his even prettier muscles, she stumbled through the universe and saved earth by landing on her feet in the same way drunks and children do.

And this, dancing with Seraphi in an empty ballroom, with the stars shining dimly through the pollution all around and above Ores, isn't different at all.

At least it's Seraphi who leans in to kiss her.

*****

“Kalique told me I'm her second chance,” Jupiter tells Seraphi, the both of them stretched out on the ballroom's floor. “She thought I was you, reborn.”

Seraphi smiles, wistful and yearning. “My daughter has always been a dreamer.”

“And yet she used the serum.”

Again, Seraphi smiles, sadder this time. “Being a dreamer doesn't mean you can't be cruel and careless, Jupiter.”

They don't speak for the rest of the night.

*****

Seraphi walks her to the spaceship in the morning, Jupiter's face covered once more.

“What are you going to do now?” she asks Seraphi. “Vanish again?”

Seraphi nods. “For a while, at least.” 

“Until?” Jupiter asks, trying her best not to expect anything, not to hope.

Seraphi grins. “Tax season.”


End file.
